Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. Holocaust Denial and Operation Reinhard. Chapter 5: Gas Chambers at the Aktion Reinhard Camps (1). A “Humane” Solution: Poison Gas and the Development of the Gas Chambers.

Author: HC Guest Blogger

Gas Chambers at the Aktion Reinhard Camps

[Investigation
Commission]

So the day of deliverance for the patient arrives.
Before an investigative committee under the direction of the asylum doctor, the
personal and medical details of the patient are examined and assessed.

[Photograph]

For archival purposes, photographs are taken of the
patient.

[Gas Chamber (Cuts to turning on of the valve,
gasometer, and observation by the doctor)]

In a hermetically sealed room the patient is exposed
to the effects of Carbon Monoxide gas.

The incoming gas is completely odourless and initially
robs the patient of their powers of judgement, and then their consciousness.

Completely unknown by the patient, without pain and
without struggle, the deliverance of death takes effect.

1942 draft for a Nazi documentary on mercy killings on
mentally sick persons by German director Herman Schweninger[1]

A “Humane” Solution: Poison Gas
and the Development of the Gas Chambers

Poison gas had been a
method chosen by Nazi leaders since 1939 for purposes of ‘racial hygiene’, to
exterminate those deemed to be ‘unfit’. On December 12-13, 1939, for instance,
SS chief Heinrich Himmler visited Posen, probably in the company of RKPA deputy
chief Werner, and was shown a model gassing at the experimental euthanasia
facility in Fort VII, Posen. His adjutant Joachim Peiper recalled this in two
accounts given in 1967 and 1970.[2] In the
genocidal climate that reigned during the late summer/autumn of 1941, the idea
to extend the use of poison gas on a widespread scale against social and
political enemies grew in popularity among Nazi officials.[3] On July 16,
1941, SS-Sturmbannführer Rolf-Heinz Höppner, head of the Security Service (SD)
in Poznan, wrote a memo to Adolf Eichmann regarding possible solutions to
problems inside the Warthegau. Höppner suggested to Eichmann the following:[4]

A danger persists this winter that not all
of the Jews (of the Warthegau) can be fed. It should be seriously considered if
the most humane solution is not to finish off those Jews incapable of work by
some quick working means. In any case, this would be more pleasant than letting
them starve to death.

The wording of the
document clearly refers to some type of poisoning act. Höppner also recommended
that employable Jewish women capable of bearing children in the Lodz ghetto be
sterilized, in order to “solve the Jewish problem within this generation” (damit
mit dieser Generation tatsächlich das Judenproblem restlos gelöst wird).[5] With the
memo to Eichmann, Höppner was pushing for the complete extermination of any
Warthegau Jew not employed at that point in time.[6]

While Höppner was reacting to local circumstances inside
the Warthegau, poison gas was also seen as a solution to the problems in the
occupied Soviet territories. As the open-air shootings escalated to include
more Jewish women and children among the victims, the psychological effects
grew immensely upon the shooters. Poison gas was seen as a means to overcome
the trauma experienced by the executioners in these shootings. This is
supported by, among other things, the memoirs Auschwitz Kommandant Rudolf Höss
who records a discussion with Eichmann:

We further discussed how the mass
annihilation was to be carried out. Only gas was suitable since killing by
shooting the huge numbers expected would be absolutely impossible and would
also be a tremendous strain on the SS soldiers who would have to carry out the
order as far as the women and children were concerned.[7]

Walter Rauff similar
testified voluntarily in 1972 about the development of gas vans:

The main issue for me at the time was that
the shootings were a considerable burden for the men who were in charge
thereof, and this burden was taken off them through the use of the gas vans.[8]

The testimony of Dr.
August Becker, inspector of the gas wagons, confirms Rauff’s statement:

The leaders of the Einsatzgruppen in the
East increasingly complained that the shooting commandos couldn’t withstand the
psychological and moral stress of the mass shootings in the long run. I know
that the people of the commands were even in mental houses, and that therefore
a new and better killing method needed to be found (…) When I was transferred
to Rauff in December 1941, he explained to me the situation that the
psychological and moral stress on the shooting commandos was no longer
sustainable and that therefore the gassing operation had been started.[9]

As early as August 11, 1941,
in a travel report on the economic situation in the Baltic, Major von Payr
included a description of the “Jewish question” in Riga. Von Payr recorded the
execution of Jewish men in the area (“mehrere tausend Juden ‘liquidiert’”) as
well as talk that the Jewish women were “later to be eliminated by gassing.”[10]

In early-mid August, developments regarding homicidal
gassings also developed in the occupied Belorussian territory. Reichsführer-SS
Himmler visited the area in this timeframe, witnessing a morning execution in
Minsk of “Jews and partisans” on August 15, followed by a tour of the
psychiatric asylum of Novinki, just north of the Belorussian capital.[11] Just
prior to Himmler’s visit Einsatzgruppe B commander Arthur Nebe ordered the
assistance of a chemist from the Criminal Technical Institute (KTI) in Berlin.[12] Shortly
after Himmler’s visit, HSSPF Bach-Zelewski also twice requested the assistance
of SS-Sturmbannführer Lange, who had experience with poison gas technology in
occupied Poland.[13]

In mid-September 1941, following further requests for KTI
personnel, discussions were held regarding how to kill the inmates at the
Novinki asylum. Nebe requested that the experts consider using explosives or
poison gas. As chemist Dr. Albert Widmann discussed with his superior, Heeß,
Carbon Monoxide bottles were ruled out due to the probable transport problems.[14]
Instead, the idea of sealing victims into a building and pumping engine exhaust
inside was accepted as a method worth exploring. Along with two experiments
with explosives at Novinki, exhaust gas was successfully tested on mental
patients in Mogilev, following the request of Einsatzkommando 8.[15] There
also are multiple testimonies that Himmler visited the Mogilev site during the
testing period.[16]

From these experiments, and with the need of the
Einsatzgruppen to remain as mobile as possible, work soon began on homicidal
gas vans, which would cycle their engine exhaust into an attached cabin filled
with people.[17]
RSHA chief Reinhard Heydrich quickly turned to Walter Rauff, head of the RSHA
office of technical affairs (including motor vehicles), who in turn summoned
motor pool chief Friedrich Pradel to discuss the possibility of such vehicles.
Rauff mentioned that a “more humane method of execution” was needed in the
East.[18] Such a
method was described in a May 1942 letter to Rauff as “death by dozing off”
instead of suffocation.[19]

Pradel then commissioned Security Police chief mechanic
Harry Wentritt, who testified about the set-up of the vans:

A flexible exhaust pipe was installed at the
truck’s exhaust, with a diameter of 58 to 60 millimeters (2.26 to 2.34 inches),
and a hole of the same size was drilled in the van floor; a metal pipe was
soldered into the hole from the outside to which the flexible exhaust pipe was
fixed. When the various parts were connected, the truck engine was started and
the exhaust fumes were channeled into the van, through the pipe leading from
the exhaust to the hole in the van floor.[20]

After gaseous samples were
taken to test the Carbon Monoxide concentration in the engine exhaust, in
early-mid November 1941 an experimental gassing with some thirty persons was
conducted at Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where the KTI had a workshop. KTI
chemists Leidig and Hoffman as well as KTI head Heeß were present. Leidig
testified that after the gassing, “the corpses had, as we chemists determined,
the pink appearance which is typical for people who have died of Carbon
Monoxide poisoning.”[21]

By year’s end, half a dozen such vans had been produced
and distributed to various units and locations (one with Einsatzgruppe C, one
with Einsatzgruppe D, two to Riga, and two to Chelmno), with more ordered
around that time. Eye-witnesses in the occupied territories reported the
appearance of gas vans late in 1941, serving to assist in the murder of Jews.[22] At the
beginning of June 1942, automotive official Willy Just of the Security Police
recorded that since December 1941 “ninety-seven thousand have been processed,
using three vans without any defects showing up in the vehicles.” Just was
coldly referring to victims of three gas vans in the Warthegau.[23]

The planning of murders with poison gas gathered pace in
October 1941 due to the imminent deportation of Jews from the Reich and the
Protectorate. In a speech in Prague, Heydrich had referred to the need “to
gather the plans and the raw material” and to “test the material.”[24] The gas
vans were highly valued for Riga as on October 25, 1941, the Ostministerium
Jewish expert, Erhard Wetzel, drafted a letter in Minister Rosenberg’s name to
be sent to Reich Kommissar for the Ostland Hinrich Lohse. The letter concerned
discussions that Wetzel had with Viktor Brack and Adolf Eichmann.[25] Brack,
former head of the T4 institution, declared his willingness to aid in the
“production of the required shelters and gassing apparatuses
(“Vergassungsapparate”)” in Riga, which was considered more efficient than
transporting some from the Reich.[26] For
Eichmann’s part, he must have agreed to the killing of Jews unfit for work in
Riga in the gassing units, as there were no objections “if those Jews who are
not fit for work are removed by Brack’s device.” On the same day that Wetzel
drafted the letter, Lohse showed up in Berlin to protest the imminent
deportations of Reich Jews to Riga. During his stay, Lohse almost certainly
discussed the relevant points of the letter with Ostministerium officials.[27] Either
way, gas vans were soon sent from Berlin to Riga.

The push for
alternative methods of murder was fuelled by the circumstances and experience
of numerous Nazi officials across Eastern Europe. The July 16, 1941 memo by
Poznan Security Services chief Höppner highlights the horrible state of Jewish
living conditions in the Warthegau, with the enormous expected losses due to
starvation. Too squeamish to watch the Jews slowly perish from deprivation,
Höppner pushed for another way to achieve the end result upon those Jews unfit
for work. Lohse was similarly presented in Berlin with the more “humane” option
against Jews unfit for work in order to ease the acceptance of Jewish
deportations from the Reich to Riga. The mental stamina of the Nazi
executioners in the open-air shootings in the occupied Soviet territories was
also wearing thin at this time especially as more Jewish women and children
were being included among the liquidations. A less personal, less direct method
was requested for all parties involved with the “Jewish Question.” Formerly
general ideas of a “quick-working means” soon cemented into the use of engine
exhaust. As shown, these developments paved the road to the construction of
homicidal gas vans. Parallel to the origins of the gas vans are the stationary
homicidal gas chambers which would come into service in the spring of 1942, also
employing engine exhaust. They are the subject of the next section.

While gas vans
were being constructed in Berlin to aid in the mobile killing actions in the
occupied Soviet territories, agreements were also made regarding the murder of
Jews in the district of Lublin, part of the General Government in occupied
Poland.[28]
Following the decision in October 1941 to construct an extermination camp in Belzec,
the SS Zentralbauleitung (Central Building Directorate) acquired twenty
local Polish residents and several Ukrainians to take part in the construction
of the camp, located off the main Lublin-to-Lwow railway line, southeast of the
main Belzec station. Polish labourer Stanislaw Kozak later testified to a postwar
Polish investigative committee about the construction of three barracks at the Belzec
camp site in November and December 1941:[29]

Next to this we built a third, 12 meters
long and 8 meters wide. This building was divided into three timber partitions,
rendering each section 4 meters wide and 8 meters long. They were 2 meters in
height. The internal walls of the barracks were constructed by nailing the
boards onto the frame and filling in the cavity with sand. On the inside of the
barracks, the walls were covered with board, and the floors and walls were then
covered with zinc up to a height of 1.10 meters. (…) The north facing side of
each section had a door, which was about 1.80 meters high and 1.10 meters wide.
The doors had rubber seals. All the doors opened outwards. The doors were very
strong, made out of 7-cm-thick boards, and, to avoid them being pushed open
from the inside, they were secured by a wooden bar resting in two iron hooks
put up specifically for the purpose.

The Belzec barracks that
Kozak most likely refers to are the living quarters for Jewish prisoners, the
undressing barrack, and the gas chamber, with three chambers measuring close to
8 x 4 meters.

After the completion of the three buildings described by
Kozak, and as a result of Heinrich Himmler’s agreement with Philip Bouhler in
mid-December 1941 to make former Euthanasia personnel available to Odilo
Globocnik, head of Aktion Reinhard, an initial wave of former T4 personnel
arrived in Belzec towards the end of December 1941. Among this first wave of
personnel was Polizeihauptmann Christian Wirth, who was given command of the Belzec
extermination camp. SS-Scharführer Erich Fuchs went with Wirth to Belzec:

One day in the winter of 1941 Wirth arranged
a transport to Poland. I was picked together with about eight or ten other men
and transferred to Belzec in three cars…Wirth told us that in Belzec “all the
Jews will be bumped off.” For this purpose barracks were built as gas chambers.
In the gas chambers I installed shower heads. The nozzles were not connected to
any water pipes because they would only serve as camouflage for the gas
chamber. For the Jews who were gassed it would seem as if they were being taken
to baths and for disinfection.[30]

The background of Wirth is
crucial. In early 1940, Wirth and Eberl had attended a test gassing at
Brandenburg.[31]
Stangl and Wirth had commanded the Hartheim ‘euthanasia’ camp before their
spells in Aktion Reinhard. Stangl had testified about gassing protocols at
Hartheim during his interrogation in Linz in 1947.[32] In
September 1945, Hartheim stoker Vinzenz Nohel revealed that Wirth had shot four
Jewish women who were too sick to walk to the gas chamber.[33] Hermann
Merta and Karl Harrer also stated that they received the belongings of gassed
victims as gifts from Wirth.[34]

The affidavit of Gorgass makes an explicit connection
between these gassing activities and Wirth’s transfer to Aktion Reinhard:

Police Captain WIRTH, whom I knew personally
and who was administrative director in several Euthanasia institutions, told me
late in summer 1941 that he had been transferred by the "foundation"
to a Euthanasia institute in the Lublin area.[35]

It is likely that around
the same time construction was underway for the Belzec extermination camp,
preparations and planning had also begun at the site of the future Sobibor
camp, also in the Lublin district. Polish railway worker Jan Piwonski
testified:

In the autumn of 1941 German officers
arrived at the station of Sobibor on three occasions. During their visit to the
station they took measurements of the platform, and the sidings leading away
from the platform, and then went into the woods nearby. I have no idea what
they were doing there. Sometime later some very thick doors, which had rubber
strips around them, arrived by train. We speculated on what purpose the doors
might be serving, and it dawned on us that the Germans were building something
here, especially when trainloads of bricks were also being delivered, and they
started to bring Jews over as well.[36]

SS-Scharführer Fuchs,
after helping with the installation of gas chambers at Belzec, was then
employed in the construction of the Sobibor gas chambers in early spring 1942:

Sometime in the spring of 1942 I drove a
truck to Lemberg on Wirth’s orders and picked up a gassing engine, which I took
to Sobibor. Upon my arrival at Sobibor I found near the station an area with a
concrete structure and several permanent houses. The special commando there was
led by Thomalla. Other SS men present included Floss, Bauer, Stangl, Friedl,
Schwarz and Barbl. We unloaded the engine. It was a heavy Russian petrol engine
(presumably an armoured vehicle or traction engine), at least 200 HP (V-engine,
8-cylinder, water cooled). We installed the engine on a concrete base and
connected the exhaust to the pipeline. Then I tried the engine. It hardly
worked. I repaired the ignition and the valves, and finally got the engine to
start.[37]

Along with the homicidal
gas vans, the gas chambers at Sobibor and Belzec were based upon the lethal
effects of engine exhaust introduced into an area where human beings were
trapped. Carbon Monoxide, one of the toxins in engine exhaust, was a favoured
method in its bottled form in mobile and stationary gas chambers against
mentally ill patients following the occupation of Poland in 1939.

The use of engine exhaust for mass murder had also been
exemplified since 8 December 1941 in Chelmno, where Warthegau officials
stationed several gas vans employing such means to gas thousands of Jews.
Gassings by Sonderkommando Lange (including at the Soldau “transit camp”)
during 1940 were discussed in Chapter 2, where we showed how these paved the
way for the same unit’s involvement in the gassing at Chelmno. Thus, when T4
personnel were assigned to help establish homicidal gas chambers at the
Reinhard camps, the idea of engine exhaust was the method most offering
itself.

Of course, there were other gaseous methods accessible to
Nazi officials to use in order to poison unwanted persons. For the Auschwitz
camp staff, the newly available cyanide-based pesticide Zyklon-B presented
itself as a suitable method to dispose of the increasing number of Soviet
prisoners of war, sick prisoners, and Jewish laborers who were “unfit for
work.”[38] In
early September 1941, a provisional gassing test was undertaken in cell block
11 in the main Auschwitz camp. After sealing the block and making it airtight,
several hundred Soviet prisoners of war, in addition to a large group of sick
inmates were brought into the basement cells, where several SS officers with
gas masks dispensed the Zyklon-B.[39] Several
more gassings in the main camp were performed with the pesticide in the
autumn/winter 1941-1942.

Unfortunately
for MGK, the use of different methods by different actors in different
situations to mass murder people in different locations does not preclude the
truth of those events. Such complexities are not unusual to recorded human
history, and in no way cast doubt on the independent sources of evidence
regarding those different methods. Instead of properly addressing that
evidence, MGK instead ignore, distort, and straw man the current research on
the development of the Nazi gas chambers, which highlight the influence and
importance of local circumstances and actions in the progression of Nazi policy
against the Jews. For instance, MGK argue that it “cannot be explained why the
euthanasia personnel” built gas chambers for the Reinhard camps, but not for
Auschwitz-Birkenau.[40] Such
poor quality arguments of incredulity stem from MGK’s ignorance and
incomprehension of the literature, for historians have indeed explained such
matters, as we have above.

[26] Such devices were noted to not yet have been manufactured, which
fits neatly into the gas van development chronology described, with the first
prototype being tested in November.

[27] This would explain why the letter was neither formally signed nor
sent.

[28] See the section Odilo Globocnik, SS Planning and the Origins of
Aktion Reinhard, Chapter 3.

[29] Vernehmung Stanislaw Kozak, 14.10.1945, BAL B162/208 AR-Z 252/59,
Bd. 6, pp.1129-30. MGK rely upon Kozak’s testimony in support of their thesis
that Belzec was a delousing-transit camp. This argument will be analyzed in the
next section.

[33] Testimony of Vinzenz Nohel, 4.9.45, DÖW, E18370/3. The date and
location of this testimony, and the national jurisdiction of the Austrian
police over their own euthanasia cases, disprove Samuel Crowell’s claim that
the euthanasia ‘narrative’ was concocted for the Nuremberg trials. For an
English translation of this and other parts of Nohel’s testimony, see Herwig
Czech, ‘Nazi Medical Crimes at the Psychiatric Hospital Gugging: Background and
Historical Context’, (DÖW), no date, pp.7-8.